


telling dreams from one another

by besselfcn



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Catholicism, Coming Out, Declan Lynch's Anxiety Disorders, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:02:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21833035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: During one of the winding three hour drives back from Henrietta to Declan’s D.C. apartment,  Matthew, slumped in the passenger seat, said, “So, Ronan is dating Adam now?”
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 46
Kudos: 492





	telling dreams from one another

**Author's Note:**

> me, to a friend while writing this: i love declan lynch now, unfortunately

During one of the winding three hour drives back from Henrietta to Declan’s D.C. apartment, Matthew, slumped in the passenger seat, said, “So, Ronan is dating Adam now?”

Declan flicked his eyes to the side to catch a glimpse of Matthew’s expression. He had expertly turned his face towards the road, leaning his temple on the glass. He looked placid. He always looked fucking placid.

“Apparently,” Declan said.

_Apparent_ was certainly one word for it. _Overdue_ was another. _Sudden_, paradoxically, was yet another.

Declan Lynch was good with words.

Ronan frequently made it seem as if he did not share this talent. When they’d pulled up to the Barns to fetch Ronan for a lunch he had promised Matthew he’d attend, Adam Parrish had been lingering behind him in the doorframe. This--along with Ronan’s other haphazard group of friends--was not an unusual sight.

What was unusual was the way he looked at his brother’s car rolling into the driveway, then back at Adam, and had said something into the other boy’s ear before leaning in to kiss him, all at once defiant and hesitant and _gentle_, in a way Declan had not thought Ronan capable of anymore.

Then he’d gotten into the car and slammed the door and said, “Alright, we doing lunch or what?”

Matthew was staring at the space where Adam used to be; he had disappeared rapidly into the house. Declan was staring at the driveway behind them as he put the car into reverse.

“You’re ready on time,” Declan had said. “Miracle of miracles.”

Then he’d watched tension that had been held in his brother’s shoulders for the last fifteen seconds, for the last twelve months, for the last eighteen years, melt away into the seat beneath him. And then they had gone to lunch.

“Mm,” Matthew hummed, now in the passenger seat and not eagerly leaning forwards from the back. Declan looked at him again. He was chewing at his sleeve. He looked positively pressurized with the need to say something and the need not to.

Sometimes he did not seem very much like a Lynch brother. Sometimes he seemed to be the most Lynch of all of them. Made of nothing but dreams and secrets and determination.

“What if,” Matthew said. “I mean, could I….” He shook his head, golden curls scattering the light. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

Declan’s first thought--treacherous, bitter--was_, of course he is. He’s Ronan’s._

Then he cleared his head of that line of reasoning. Matthew was Matthew. There were swaths of things deeply un-Ronan about Matthew; the openness he carried in his heart. The way he swallowed up any marginally edible thing put in front of him. The oblivious good-naturedness that stretched so far into allowing other people to like him that it wrapped neatly around into selfishness, not that anyone really minded.

“It’s okay, Matthew,” Declan said. Then, because he meant it, he reached over and tousled Matthew’s hair, rolling his head around a bit while he did it. “Just do me a favor and stay away from politicans’ sons. You never really know which ones are just in it to piss off their fathers.”

Matthew beamed. He never merely smiled; he always beamed.

“Yessir,” he said, in that easy voice of his. Then he slid back down in his seat and closed his eyes, letting the rattle of I-66 lull him to sleep.

When Declan was quite sure Matthew was no longer listening to him, he let out a long, shaky breath.

Declan had long been a keeper of Ronan’s secrets. He had been steeling himself against the exposure of them since Niall Lynch had woken him one summer morning and said _Declan, you have a new brother_, which was not a sentence one would usually argue with but which was said with a tone of _do not argue with me_.

To add Matthew to this equation as an owner of secrets himself rather than as the secret was not one of the eventualities for which Declan had prepared.

He had, in contrast, been preparing for the eventuality of Ronan since his middle brother was—he didn’t know anymore. Twelve, thirteen. He can’t even say what it was that he _had_ noticed. Maybe just the absence of interest.

He didn’t think Niall ever noticed. Niall noticed very little that was not directly pertinent to Niall.

Declan had thought perhaps Ronan just found most high school aged girls to be what they were: rather boring. But a year and a half of Adam Parrish and (ugh) Joseph Kavinsky had brought the truth into crystalline focus--for his brother, he suspected, as much as for himself.

He wishes he could say he’d been immediately, rapturously supportive, the way pamphlets and how-to pages instructed you ought to be.

Mostly, he’d just been afraid.

Anything that drew attention _towards_ rather than _away from_ was dangerous for a Lynch, and the boys of Aglionby had nearly as much to say on the subject of men like Ronan as the leaders of St. Agnes did.

(Not that Declan put much stock into Catholicism’s more literal doctrines. It’d lost credibility with him fairly early on; he found it hard to believe it took God seven days to do what he’d seen his father do in a night.)

As far as he’d seen, though, nobody had said anything to him beyond what was normally said to Ronan, which was primarily things like _fuck off_ or _you really ought to apply yourself more_. This was a relief. It was also an incident waiting to happen. Most things in Declan’s life were this way.

He pressed himself into the driver’s seat and breathed. It was easy to breathe while one drove.

It was harder to breathe in a church, at least without it feeling conspicuous. Earlier that day, when they’d all gotten up to go to Sunday mass, he’d been alone with Ronan in the pews while Matthew finished eating a breakfast sandwich full of grease out in the car. Declan had been focusing very intently on breathing, then.

He’d turned to Ronan after a few of these careful, measured breaths, and said, “You seem happier.”

Ronan had shrugged. “It’s church,” he’d said, like that was an explanation.

“I mean,” Declan had said carefully. “With him.”

Ronan had stared. His mouth opened. It closed again. Decaln actually watched his brother _blush_, for the first time in years.

“Picked a hell of a place to bring this up,” Ronan snapped. Declan wasn’t sure whether he meant here under the irritably large stained-glass picture of the Savior or here under the tiny apartment hidden away in the roof.

“You should invite him for lunch sometime,” Declan had concluded. “Matthew’d like that, I think.”

Ronan looked down. His hands were clenched around each other. He looked like he very much wanted to be pissed off at Declan but could not, for once in his life, find it within himself to do so.

“Yeah,” he said, quietly. “Maybe.”

Then Matthew had come bounding in, and then the rest of the congregation, and the Lynch brothers were swallowed up with the crowd, disappearing into the high-backed pews of the rusted old church like they belonged there, like they’d always belonged there.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on twitter @besselfcn, or just yell at me about raven boys in the comments.


End file.
